


Bloom

by towardsthelight



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post-Hogwarts, Pre-A Study in Pink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-18
Packaged: 2018-04-03 12:41:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4101352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towardsthelight/pseuds/towardsthelight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By the time Sherlock Holmes came into the equation, Mrs Hudson hadn't been known as Petunia Evans in years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Light and Dark Places

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter explains the reasoning of Petunia's decision to start going by Martha Hudson. Hope you enjoy!

Having almost a year to reflect on things can really alter your point of view. During the war, between July 1997 and May 1998, Petunia realised just how badly she had been treating her own flesh and blood; her own nephew. She wasn't exactly as vocal about it as Dudley, who spent every waking moment lecturing his parents about just how badly they had screwed up. 

In May, when they were finally allowed to return to Privet Drive, Petunia decided to follow her darling son's example and reach out to Lily's son. Well, she also reached out because of how guilty she felt, but never mind that. Vernon wasn't pleased. In his mind, he had no reason to feel guilty about how he had treated his nephew, he was a freak, after all. Her son couldn't forgive Vernon for showing absolutely no remorse. The atmosphere in Number 4, Privet Drive got tenser and tenser until Vernon couldn't take it any more. In an attempt to make her see sense, Petunia's husband gave her an ultimatum: their marriage or the freaks. She might have chosen her husband, but her son intervened.

'Mum, I swear, I'll never forgive you if you go with Vernon. We treated Harry like dirt, but we've got a chance to fix stuff. Please Mum, you need to do the right thing!'

So Petunia Dursley became Petunia Evans once more.

Filled with optimism, she rented a house with Dudley with some of the money from the divorce settlement and some of Dudley's wages from his job at the chippy. After about a week, he convinced her to send a letter to Harry. She had absolutely no idea where he was living, but luckily her nephew had told her darling son that he was living at a place called 'The Burrow'.

Her heart slightly hurt at that, because not only did Harry not tell her, Dudley hadn't felt the need to inform his own mother about where her nephew was. He knew she wanted to make amends but he still did not tell her.

Anyway, her son said that Harry had regularly sent post to Number 4, Privet Drive after the war. In his last reply, he had told Harry their new address. Apparently, this meant that they would get a letter in about a week from him delivered by an owl, so they could send a reply back asking if he was willing to meet with them.

As Dudley said, a reply came and with it, an owl and the means to contact Harry. Petunia composed a letter to him that apologised for her mistakes and asked for the chance to make things right. To Dudley's joy, Harry said that although there was a lot of bad blood between them, he was willing to try to make amends. He didn't want to lose someone who had known his mother so well.

The beginning of the meeting between the three remaining members of the Evans family was awkward to say the least. However, after a heartfelt apology from Petunia (who genuinely meant it) the ice began to break. Well, it thawed slightly, at least. The three of them began to meet up at least once a month and Dudley was the happiest Petunia had ever seen him. 

If she was being honest, Petunia would say that she was utterly terrified when Harry said that they should meet his girlfriend, Ginny. How would this girl treat her, if she knew how badly Harry had suffered under her care? Understandably, Ginny and Petunia were rather awkward with each other when they first met, but with time, they came to be on almost friendly terms. Well, they were definitely civil, at least.

A few years passed and all was well. Petunia was on good terms with her nephew and great terms with her son. She had also managed to make Harry's girlfriend hate her slightly less. To her great delight, Dudley had managed to find himself a proper girlfriend, so she had a hope of grandchildren alive as well. He had taken some classes and worked hard to get a better job as a mechanic. Petunia had a job as a secretary which she didn't exactly enjoy, but it paid the bills.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. She had been sitting at home on a dark Thursday evening in December, waiting for her son to arrive home from his new job. She was so proud of her dear son and how well he had gotten his life together. Suddenly, she heard a loud popping noise and Harry appeared in her sitting room. She caught a glimpse of his ashen face before her sight was obscured by the armful of sobbing nephew that she now had.

'I'm so sorry, Aunt Petunia, I swear I didn't know this was going to happen, I thought we'd rounded up all of the bloody Death Eaters!' Harry was hysterical and sobbing, barely able to stop himself from totally breaking down. Petunia could tell something terrible had happened.

'Stop- Calm down- HARRY!' Petunia exclaimed. 'Please, tell me what's happened!'

'It's Dudley!' Harry managed to gasp. With those words, Petunia's heart sunk. 

'Harry, what's happened to my son?'

A few minutes later, Petunia was feeling completely numb. Dudley, the person she loved the most in the whole world, was dead. A rogue Death Eater (a fighter from the losing side of the war) had researched Harry and discovered that the best way to hurt Harry was to hurt his family, friends and loved ones. Somehow, he found out about his closest relatives and decided to kill the one around the same age as the Boy-Who-Lived.

Petunia had never been the most forgiving or logical person. Clouded with grief, she came to a conclusion. It was all Harry's fault. The other wizard murdered her son because he was close to Harry Potter.

It hurt too much for Petunia to stay in contact with her nephew, since she still (at best, partially) blamed him for Dudley's death. She fell out of contact with Ginny as well. The home she had shared with Dudley held too many memories for her, so she moved out. Alone and bitter, she had no idea how to move on with her life.

She decided that being named Petunia was too conspicuous now, the Death Eaters may have found out her name. Her surname didn't matter as much; there were thousands of people with the surname Evans in Britain alone. However, it was hard for her to think of a new name. She knew that she wanted it to honour Dudley in some way, so she decided on Martha, a name alike to Matthew, which was her son's middle name. For her middle name, she chose her mother's name, Louise.

And so, Petunia became Martha Louise Evans. She knew she needed to get money somehow. To her surprise, a large amount of money had appeared in her bank account. She realised that it was probably from her nephew and considered refusing to use it, but she needed it too much. She swallowed her pride and bought a building on Baker Street (which consisted of a few flats) with the money. Two years passed and she was still alone, but at least she earned money from renting out the two flats that she did not occupy herself.

As a coping mechanism, she started drinking again. It got out of control, she was drinking even more than she did in her days as an exotic dancer (which was to raise money for university). Dudley haunted her dreams and memories each and every day and she was terribly lonely. Things were bad, but they weren't terrible just yet.

At least, until she met Frank Hudson and got involved with the wrong person yet again.


	2. Frank Hudson

'Frank William Hudson, I am arresting you on suspicion of murdering George Lanson and Peter Derricks. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence...'

Martha Hudson, previously known as Petunia Evans, wished she had never met the thrice-damned man named Frank Hudson. 

\- - - -

When Martha met Frank, she was slowly beginning to get her life back on track. She still wanted nothing more than to be a mother to her beloved son again, but she was getting by. Frank Hudson managed to turn her life upside down, and not in a good way. 

They met in a pub in London. Martha was on one of her slightly more drunk days and Frank just wanted a beer, and if he was lucky, to meet a woman. One ridiculous pick up line later and the two of them were talking about television programmes or something equally as mundane. When the pub shut for the night, a mixture of alcohol and loneliness led Martha to go home with the man. It had been years after Dudley's death and she hadn't made many friends in that time. The night went better than Martha expected, so they continued to meet up almost every week. 

Their relationship was purely physical, but for reasons still unknown to her, Frank proposed to her six months after they met. The proposal was even less romantic than Vernon's had been, which had consisted of him going down on one knee in her mother's living room. Frank had asked her completely out of the blue on a cloudy Monday evening. Looking back on things, she really shouldn't have said yes.

They got married in a tiny and boring ceremony with just the two of them and a priest. Martha didn't wear a dress and Frank didn't wear a suit, they were both wearing utterly boring and casual clothes. In all honesty, they may as well have wed in their pyjamas. They didn't write their own vows or go on a honeymoon. It was almost the complete opposite of a fairytale wedding.

Very little changed for the better after they got married. Frank stayed at Baker Street most of the time, but they never went out for a meal or talked about their feelings. In the simplest terms, it was a terrible marriage. Martha was still terribly lonely and still battling alcoholism. She thought that maybe she could have another child to fill up the loneliness deep within her, but it seemed too much like betraying Dudley. To be honest, she thought she was a bit too old to get pregnant too. Life was bad, and it got even worse for the mismatched couple.

On their fifth wedding anniversary, her husband didn't get her a single thing. As a matter of fact, he didn't even come back to Baker Street. Martha assumed that he had stayed out drinking with his so-called friends, although he never seemed especially friendly with any of them. He had seemed very jumpy before he left but she just thought he was nervous about something. She had no idea what exactly he was nervous about, though.

She began to really notice his absence after a few days passed and there was still no sign of him. It was four days later that Frank finally came home. He was in a terrible state, grabbing his belongings and shoving them into a rucksack.

'Sorry, Martha, I'm in just a spot of trouble. I really think it's be best if I went on a holiday, if I left the country for a while, even though they've got no evidence... Oh, hell!'

A sharp rapping was heard on the door as she heard a muffled voice declaring itself as the police and demanding to be let in instantly. Her time as an average law-abiding housewife on Privet Drive must have left a mark on her after all. Almost on autopilot, she rushed downstairs and opened the door, ignoring her husband's furious yells and attempts to run past her. He tried to force her to not open the door for the police.

'Martha, I swear, if you open that door, you'll regret it for the rest of your days. If you let the police in, I'll utterly ruin your life. Now, for the last time, help me barricade the door and keep the bloody tossers out!'

If there was one thing that Martha had learned during her marriage to Vernon Dursley, it was that there is a point of no return in all relationships. It was debatable whether you could even call her current situation a relationship- but this was that point in it. She could help her husband escape from the police when he may have committed a terrible crime, endangering herself, or she could lose all ties to a man she didn't love.

It wasn't exactly a difficult choice.

Remembering the combat lessons Harry had given her during their period of civility, she drove her elbow backwards into Frank and ran as if the demons of Hell were chasing her. Ignoring his cry of rage, she sprinted to the door, flung it open and quickly explained her problem to the officers as they swarmed inside and arrested her husband.

She tried to ask one of them what he was being arrested for, but Martha received no answer from the police or from her wretched husband until she heard him being officially arrested. Frank had murdered two people?

Well, at least she was consistently terrible in relationships. She'd almost started to expect it by now.

\- - - - 

She thought that she had seen the last of Frank when he was arrested, but it turned out that she would have to go in for questioning about her husband's apparent murdering. After seeing the video evidence that the police had, it seemed that he would be locked away almost instantly, so she answered all of their questions honestly. There was no point in giving an alibi for a doomed man, right? There wasn't any reason for her to lie about him, was there?

Once again, things went horribly wrong for Martha Hudson. The eyewitness source who had seen the murders came forward and said that he was wrong, that it definitely was not Frank. Her husband apparently had some friends in high places who had got him a terrific lawyer who had built a reasonably solid case for him. However, the lawyer stated that Frank was at home with Martha at the time of the murders, which conflicted with the evidence she had given. That appeared to be the only thing that was stopping her husband from walking free.

To make things even worse, all of the video evidence they had disappeared. It had been replaced by other footage without Frank in it and all other copies had been deleted. She had heard that the policemen who had examined it were now saying that there was no footage with Frank in it in the first place.

The police were starting to think that she was the one who had lied to them, as she had no other people to stand up for her. She was terrified her husband would get off, as she now knew exactly what he was capable of. He had said that he would ruin her life, if he was set free he would be able to. She was the only thing stopping him from being declared not guilty, so it was sure that if he was set free, he would not be happy with her at all. Martha was scared for her life.

Martha knew when she was beaten. She thought about attempting to contact her nephew and getting the wizarding world to help her, but she simply could not. Even over five years after her darling son's death, it was still fresh in her mind. The blame and the hurt was still there. She felt more stuck and trapped than she ever had before. How on earth could she get out of this?

She was sitting in the police station, desperately asking the inspector if he knew anyone who could help her. The man, one Gregory Lestrade, said that although he didn't believe that Frank had murdered the men, he knew how to settle the case once and for all. Martha was told to meet with a man named Sherlock Holmes.


End file.
